1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer storage, more particularly, to on-line storage and sharing of data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Rapidly growing data volume and the social nature of computing are not satisfied by current closed storage solutions. With the rise of social applications, user-generated content, and faster Internet connections, users are creating and sharing more data than ever before.
Current storage solutions available to home users fall into two categories, local solutions that are not accessible globally and online solutions that do not allow a user to share data with others effectively.
Storage solutions available to high-volume users consist of large servers that use expensive high-end hardware. There are no storage solutions that can be built up from inexpensive commodity hardware available on client devices (i.e. computers, portable devices, and memory cards) by the community or enterprise that can hide the architecture differences of various platforms like MAC OS, Linux/Unix, Windows, or Symbian, and that can be used as additional storage to the existing systems (e.g. email systems).